The Citadel of G.H.O.S.T. gleamed in the sunlight like a wound in the clouds — silver spires, rotating surveillance rings, and heat-vented towers that screamed quiet power. From the sky, it resembled a weapon holstered in the earth. From the ground, it felt like standing in the eye of a thunderstorm waiting to break.
Inside, the hum of operations never ceased.
Xavier Bridger — codename Maven — stood inside the hologrid, visor down, adaptive armor twitching with neural response. Each micro-plate adjusted as he rotated his wrist, the blade emitter briefly sparking to life before settling back into standby.
His face was young — but it carried the kind of weight most people didn't earn until much later in life.
His skin was bronze-gold, warm-toned, sweat-slicked from the sim's rising heat. His jawline was sharp, but not overly cut — more practical than polished. A faint stubble lined his chin and upper lip, beneath his right eye — faded, almost unnoticeable, except in the wrong light. No one ever asked about it.
His eyes were his tell: deep, intense, near-black, but when they caught light — like the flicker of the blade emitter or the shine off the sim wall — they sparked with a glint of bronze, like something inside was still burning. Not rage. Purpose. Constant calculation. A mind that never fully shut off.
And his hair — tight, shoulder-length dreads, freshly re-tied but fraying at the edges from motion and heat — swayed slightly each time he moved, framing his face like a crown carved from pressure and sleepless nights.
There was no arrogance in his expression. Just that unshakable, quiet defiance.
A voice sliced through the air. Crisp. Confident. Slightly amused.
"You keep adjusting that wrist. Nervous twitch, or just trying to impress Toya again?"
Hunter Solomon leaned against the reinforced paneling near the edge of the training deck, arms crossed at first glance — but his hands were never still.
Two black-bladed knives spun slowly between his fingers, the motion precise, methodical. Not showy — ritual. Something quiet that kept the edge on his control.
His frame was lean but dense, all tension and quiet strength, wrapped in dark tactical armor that had seen better years. A faded scar curved down the right side of his jaw — not from battle, but something older. A lesson. Or a loss.
The overhead lights caught the subtle grooves etched into the knives — symbols from the Shadow Elite days, half-erased by time. No one else in the room ever asked what they meant. They knew better.
His face was angular, all sharp edges — short buzzed hair, olive-brown skin, faint stubble shadowing a clenched jaw. But it was his eyes that unsettled people: a cool, calculated gray, scanning the room like a chessboard. Always five moves ahead. Always reading what you weren't saying.
Xavier glanced at him through the visor slit. "Neither. The blade response time was lagging by half a second in last week's Tokyo run. H.O.P.E. flagged the neural relay as inconsistent."
Hunter's expression barely changed. "Sure. Let's go with that."
From above, the observation deck rotated into view. Toya Sakusi — Ravager — watched them silently through the plex wall, claws sheathed at her sides. Even through the glass, Xavier could feel the charge in her gaze.
Her face was sharp — not just in bone structure, but in intent. High cheekbones, a defined jawline, and full lips pulled into a tight line. A faint scar traced the edge of her left brow — not obvious, but earned. Her skin was deep umber, rich and warm even in the cold light, framed by tightly braided rows pulled back into a high knot, the ends flicking with every movement like a whip waiting to strike.
Her eyes — dark, almond-shaped, unreadable — held something coiled. Not rage. Restraint. The kind that burns hotter than any fury. The kind that was seconds from boiling over.
In that moment, the wind kicked up embers around her boots and her jaw set with terrifying calm.
She was beautiful like a storm held still by willpower.
She'd been different lately. More contained. Like a dam trying to unlearn how to break.
H.O.P.E.'s voice echoed from the chamber wall, calm and synthetic.
"Simulation calibrated. Vaknar assault scenario — adjusted parameters per last conflict."
"Load it," Xavier said.
The chamber flickered — turning from steel and glass to a scorched cityscape. Smoke curled from collapsed metro lines. Rubble flickered with ambient fire. A destroyed G.H.O.S.T. relay station stood in the distance.
"Begin."
Three hulking drones dropped from the sky, black-plated, with glowing red visor slits — coded after Vaknar elites. Heat signatures spiked instantly.
Xavier dashed forward, left gauntlet hissing as plasma carved through the first one's armor. The second drone arced behind him, releasing a burst of concussive fire — Xavier ducked, slid, flipped upward, and slammed his foot into its chest, launching it into a shattered building wall.
Hunter didn't move from his position.
"Need help, prodigy?"
Xavier grunted, driving his blade into the third drone's exposed chest port. It collapsed with a metallic gasp.
"Not yet."
Hunter flicked a blade at a fourth one that dropped from above, the dagger slicing straight into the drone's ocular core.
It fizzled out in midair.
"Nice," Xavier muttered, catching his breath. "You still use the Shadow Elite throws."
Hunter finally stood up straight. "Hard to unlearn precision."
The simulation ended. Scorched city gone. The real world flickered back into existence. Silence returned.
Toya entered from the upper level, descending the side stairs slowly. Her boots made no sound. Her jacket fluttered like a second skin.
"You hesitated again," she said, nodding toward the corner where a sixth drone had been spawning — the simulation aborted it, but the system logged it anyway.
"I calculated I could down the others before it landed," Xavier replied.
"You calculated wrong," Toya replied coldly. "In a real skirmish, it would've burned your head off."
Hunter's brow raised, but he didn't interfere.
Toya stepped closer, voice low now. "You're not untouchable, Xavier. Stop training like you're Grim's shadow."
That one hit harder than she knew.
Or maybe she did know.
Xavier's mouth tightened, but he said nothing. The training room's silence returned, stretching thin between them.
Then: "Elites — report to Deck B. Live mission. Immediate launch."
Thomas Payne's voice crackled through the intercom.
Hunter was already moving. Toya spun on her heel and followed.
Xavier lingered just a moment longer.
He looked up at the flickering remnants of the simulated city.
That same scene — almost exactly — had played in his dreams. But in the dreams, it wasn't a drone he fought.
It was himself. Bleeding. Broken. Screaming into a collapsing portal.
He tore the thought away.
"Pull the logs, H.O.P.E.," he ordered quietly, then turned and sprinted after the others.
✦ ✦ ✦
Deck B - Hangar Bay 1
The engines of the stealth ship roared to life as Xavier boarded last. Inside, the team was already locked in.
Toya sat across from him, eyes closed. Kane was securing weapon crates. Shayna — Frost — prepped her gauntlets with a glimmer of blue across her palms. Sparrow tuned his arrows in silence, fingers delicate as a surgeon.
Thomas Payne stood at the front, arms behind his back, metallic eye scanning each of them.
"No messing around," he said. "No regular ops this time. This is cleanup. Geneva cell reports a rogue enhanced skirmish, possibly tied to black market augment sales."
Sparrow scoffed. "Another amateur with a thermal chip stuck in his neck?"
"We'll see," Payne said. "But Atlas flagged this for real-time recon. He wants eyes on ground. Hunter — you've got tactical lead."
Hunter nodded.
Payne stepped back as the hatch closed behind him. "You fly quiet, you strike fast, and come back home alive."
The lights in the shuttle dimmed as the launch countdown began.
"FOR THE FALLEN," Toya muttered.
Xavier responded without thinking, eyes narrowing, armor locking in.
"For the Fallen."
Their Ghostcraft dipped beneath the cloud cover, revealing Geneva — a grid of steel and snow, twisted with smoke and sirens. Civilian lines had been pulled back by G.H.O.S.T. riot protocols. The air shimmered from residual heat contrast. Below, a half-frozen city square glinted in the morning light, surrounded by police barricades and G.H.O.S.T. perimeter drones.
The team loaded in with practiced silence.
Shayna Price, codename Frost, checked the seals on her gauntlets, the inner coils of coolant glowing faintly blue. Sharp-boned and striking, with pale skin and storm-gray eyes that rarely blinked more than needed. Her expression was unreadable — somewhere between distant and deadly.
Kane secured the weapons crates, his massive shoulders hunched beneath his reinforced coat, armor shifting subtly beneath his skin. Square-jawed, with a fighter's nose and a constant five o'clock shadow. His dark eyes rarely showed emotion, but the tight set of his mouth said enough.
Oliver Midas — Sparrow — leaned back in his seat with legs crossed, adjusting the aim modules on his arrows, one by one. All cheekbones and charm, with golden-brown skin and sly hazel eyes that always looked like they were in on a joke no one else knew.
Xavier sat across from Toya, trying not to stare at the way her claws clicked against the metal bench.
She didn't look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the mission readout — rotating blue holograms flickering with the target's known stats
Sparrow's HUD flared to life as he tapped the screen embedded in his bracer.
"Subject's last seen in Metro Z3. Male, thirty-five-ish. Shirtless. Definitely unregistered. No formal enhancement record. But the dude's ice-walking like a goddamn glacier demon."
Frost leaned forward, eyes narrowing at the map feed.
"That's not tech-generated ice. Too organic. It's spreading through walls and metal like it's adapting."
"Unstable mutations," Kane said, flexing his neck. "We've seen it in failed subjects. They twist from the inside out."
"And then explode," Toya muttered. "They always explode."
Hunter clicked his blade into lock position and stood as the lights above them turned red.
"Listen up. We don't go loud unless it's necessary. Atlas wants the subject alive."
"Of course he does," Toya murmured, rising beside him. "He wants to see what makes it tick."
Toya finally spoke, voice even. "We going full kill protocol?"
"No," said Kane from the back, his armor creaking. "Atlas said live capture. Wants to study the ability strain."
"Of course he does," Toya muttered.
The rear hatch lit up in red: Thirty Seconds to Drop.
Xavier's armor adjusted around his spine with a soft hiss. He exhaled and leaned forward.
"This is it?" he asked, glancing at Hunter. "My first real field run?"
Hunter smirked. "You don't really count your first op until something tries to take your head off"
The wind howled into the cabin as the ramp dropped.
Geneva's frozen skyline opened up below.
Toya stepped to the edge and dropped first, claws gleaming.
"Let's get to work" she called.
And just like that, the Elites vanished into the snow.
✦ ✦ ✦
Geneva – Transit District Z3
The scene was chaos.
Steam poured from ruptured pipes along the ground. Frost laced every street sign. Civilian vehicles were trapped under jagged formations of ice that looked less like natural spikes and more like growths. Organic. Angry.
Snow flurried around them as the squad landed hard in the center of a ruined transport plaza. The metro entrance had caved in, frozen solid in sharp, unnatural spires of ice.
Civilian barricades surrounded the square, hastily abandoned.
One local officer jogged up, nervous, panting hard beneath frost-covered armor.
"We — we pulled back when we realized he wasn't stopping. Just kept walking into the tunnels. Didn't say much. Then he — he froze the walls, the signs, everything. Like he was leaking ice."
"Visual on weaponry?" Hunter asked.
"No. Just hands. He's fast. Hit one of our guys with a pulse — put him through a reinforced tram car."
The officer glanced at Frost.
"This guy... he's not like you. There's something way off with him."
They descended into the metro station cautiously — Sparrow high on overwatch, Kane anchoring the rear, Toya on point.
Frost crouched near a shattered bench and ran a gloved finger along the ice.
"This isn't normal cold. It's layered in pulses. Like breathing."
The steel was warped — not just cold, but reshaped.
"Frostbite doesn't do this," he muttered. "Something else is driving the reaction."
"Doesn't matter," Hunter said. "Toya, take point. Kane, follow. I want eyes on that tunnel before this thing doubles back."
Sparrow hung behind, adjusting his arrow rig. Frost dropped next to Xavier as they moved.
"You good?" she asked.
He nodded, but she caught the stiffness in his armor anyway.
"You're thinking too hard," she said, voice soft. "Try feeling your way through."
He glanced at her. "You freeze things for a living."
"Yeah. But I do it from the gut."
Down in the metro entrance, Toya halted with a raised hand.
They all froze.
A low hum echoed from the tunnel ahead — not mechanical. Alive.
Then: movement.
A figure staggered out of the dark.
No armor. No boots. Shirt torn, chest heaving with every breath. His skin was pale and steaming, his eyes flicking with residual light-blue glow. His arms were covered in frostbloom scars — marks that pulsed like veins. His lips were blue. Skin spiderwebbed with pale frost scars. His pupils twitched.
Hunter stepped forward slowly, blade drawn but low.
"This is G.H.O.S.T. . Identify yourself."
The man didn't respond. His head tilted, slow and off.
Then, his voice came — broken and strange.
The man's eyes locked on Xavier.
His pupils twitched, then widened.
He took a step forward — slow, unstable — but focused.
"You," he rasped. "I've seen you before."
Xavier froze. "What?"
"In the dark... you were there. Before it broke."
His voice wasn't angry. It was scared.
Then, his voice came — broken and strange.
"I didn't ask for this. I woke up cold. They said I'd burn."
Toya's eyes narrowed. Her claws clicked out with a metallic snap.
"Burn?" she said sharply.
The man's head tilted in a sudden, unnatural motion — like his neck forgot how bones work.
Then his eyes rolled back.
The temperature suddenly dropped.
BOOM.
A burst of pressure slammed outward — a shockwave of ice, violent and wild. Steam and frost tore through the air as the explosion erupted from his chest like a bomb.
Hunter moved first.
He threw his shoulder into Xavier, knocking them both back just as the wave shattered a parked police cruiser. The metal crumpled like paper. Sirens sparked and died.
Sparrow spun mid-air, landing in a crouch behind a concrete barrier.
"Incoming!" he shouted, already drawing an arrow.
The enhanced lunged.
His movements were clumsy — no form, no training — but brutal. A wide, swinging arc of his frozen arm cracked the pavement in two. Toya met him mid-charge, claws out, blocking the hit in a spray of ice shards.
The force still knocked her back two steps.
"Goddamn it!" she growled.
His frost-covered arm slammed down where Kane had just moved, exploding the tiles beneath.
Toya met him head-on again, claws out, sliding under the next swing. She caught his wrist with a slash that would've taken another man's hand clean off — but the cold around his skin froze her blade on contact.
"This fracker's mutating mid-fight!" she snapped.
Frost dropped low, hands spread wide, palms hitting the frozen ground.
Blue light surged across the stone — a controlled burst of her own cold, elegant and symmetrical. Her charge slammed into his blast, freezing it in mid-air like a frozen explosion caught mid-frame. It hung for a breath before shattering down like brittle glass.
Kane roared from the flank and closed in, armor plating shifting across his skin. He grabbed the enhanced from behind in a full hold, lifting him clean off the ground as the man thrashed violently.
"Got him!"
Xavier scrambled to his feet, HUD lighting up in warning-red.
"Wait—he's not stable—don't break the—"
The man screamed.
Not pain. Not fear.
It was primal. Something wrong and deep—a sound that felt like it belonged in a different century.
His whole body spasmed. His chest convulsed with heat so intense the air shimmered.
Kane barely held on.
Then came Frost.
She surged forward, sliding across the pavement, one hand drawing a glowing arc through the air. She planted her palm against his chest—
"Enough."
A pulse of dense cold erupted outward — clean, clinical. Ice wrapped around his torso and arms in an instant, encasing him in a block of shimmering crystal, mid-scream.
The man froze solid, still twitching slightly inside the ice.
Silence.
Steam rose from the cracks in the pavement. Shattered bits of ice glittered across the ground like shrapnel.
Frost stood slowly, breath shallow.
"He's down. For now."
Toya circled behind the frozen man, keeping her distance.
"What the hell was that?"
Hunter didn't answer.
Frost kneeled beside him, checking for vitals.
"He's alive. Barely. Whatever's in his blood is eating him alive."
"Transport him," Hunter said. "Bag him."
Sparrow landed beside them, lowering his bow. "That didn't look like any serum burnout I've seen."
Kane tilted his head at the frozen figure.
"This isn't just unstable. It's unfinished."
Hunter crouched low, scanning the ice.
"Biothermal readings are jagged. Core body temp's not matching limb data. It's like his body's... arguing with itself."
Toya folded her arms. "I've seen unstable metas. They don't talk like that. They don't know they're unstable."
Xavier stepped forward, eyes locked on the frozen man's expression.
Confusion. Pain.
"He knew we were coming," he said softly. "Or thought he did. The way he looked at me—he wasn't guessing."
Frost frowned. "You think he's seen us before?"
Xavier shook his head, kneeling down as he scanned the readings.
No ID.
No implant.
No traceable origin.
Just... raw power and trauma.
He looked human.
But barely.
Snow had begun to fall again shortly after. Light. Quiet. Deceptively peaceful.
The G.H.O.S.T. transport ship hovered above the metro plaza, its engines keeping a low, steady whine as the containment rig lowered into place — four autonomous drones forming a floating cruciform frame around the frozen enhanced.
Xavier watched in silence as they lifted the ice block with surgical precision. The man's body — still locked in that mid-scream posture — cast a long, fractured shadow across the cracked pavement.
Sparrow stepped back as the containment rig aligned with the open stasis capsule in the belly of the ship.
"Putting him in deep freeze. Low oxygen, hard shell, neural dampeners. He won't be dreaming anytime soon."
"Good," Toya muttered, rubbing a smear of frost off her arm. "Whatever was crawling through his head doesn't belong awake."
Kane secured the capsule, locking the side latches with a hiss.
"Citadel containment's expecting delivery within the hour."
Xavier turned to Hunter. "What happens after?"
Hunter didn't answer immediately. His gaze lingered on the stasis unit, unreadable.
"Depends what they find in his blood."
"Think he was enhanced... or born like that?"
"That's the problem," Hunter said. "I don't think even he knew."
The stasis capsule vanished into the underbelly of the Ghostcraft with a deep thunk. The hatch sealed shut, lights on the rig pulsing from red to stable blue.
Xavier stood near the edge of the landing zone, watching as the last of the perimeter drones powered down. The frost in the air was starting to melt now — the plaza thawing in slow, uneven patches.
Toya stood beside him, arms crossed, quiet.
"You didn't freeze up back there," she said.
Xavier blinked, glanced over. "Didn't exactly have time to."
"Still," she said, "most rookies hesitate their first time seeing something broken like that. You didn't."
He shrugged. "I didn't feel like I had the option."
Toya gave him the faintest nod. "Good. That's how you stay alive."
Behind them, Kane and Frost loaded into the ship without a word. Sparrow waited near the ramp, arrow rig already packed, watching something on his HUD with bored eyes.
Hunter approached last, giving Xavier a once-over.
"You're not dead," he said. "Startin' to think you might actually belong."
"We'll see after my second mission," Xavier said, pulling his helmet off as he walked toward the ramp.
"Your second?" Sparrow called out. "We're barely done with the first."
The others were already boarding. Toya didn't say anything else — just walked up the ramp and disappeared into the dark interior of the cruiser.
Xavier stood for one more second, taking a long look around the square.
The destruction. The frozen cars. The way the tramline rails had twisted like ribbon from the ice burst.
There was still something about the way the enhanced man had looked at him. Like it meant something. Like it wasn't random.
He forced the thought down and climbed aboard.
The ramp hissed closed behind him.
Moments later, the Ghostcraft rose from the plaza, silent and smooth, and vanished into the sky — leaving Geneva scarred but peaceful enough for another day.
The hum of the engines was a low, steady throb beneath the floor — barely audible, but always there. The kind of sound you only notice when adrenaline starts to fade.
Inside the hold, the team rode in silence.
Toya sat strapped into her seat near the weapons rack, head tilted back, eyes closed. She hadn't retracted her claws yet.
Frost sat across from her, flexing her fingers slowly, blue energy dancing between knuckles.
Kane leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, watching the sealed stasis capsule in the center of the cabin — weapon at the ready. Like it might move.
Sparrow scrolled idly through his HUD feed, the glow casting faint green light on his face.
Hunter stood, back against the wall, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded but alert. He hadn't spoken since lift-off.
Xavier sat near the rear bulkhead, visor off, helmet cradled between his hands. His heart had finally stopped hammering... but the questions hadn't.
"He wasn't enhanced," he said aloud — mostly to himself. "Not like we've seen."
No one jumped in to disagree.
Frost looked up after a moment.
"Something was inside him. Something he couldn't control."
"Or didn't want to," Toya added without opening her eyes.
"Still doesn't explain how he recognized you," Sparrow muttered, not looking away from his feed.
Xavier shook his head. "I don't think he did. Not exactly."
Hunter opened one eye.
"He looked straight at you. Called you out before anyone else moved."
"He was rambling," Xavier said. "Broken. I think he just... latched on."
The ship hit mild turbulence — not enough to shift weight, but enough to break the moment.
Hunter pushed off the wall and moved toward the sealed containment chamber.
"Whatever he was, he's G.H.O.S.T. business now."
"You think Atlas will brief us?" Frost asked.
Hunter didn't answer. Just stared at the pod for a moment.
Then turned away.
"Does he ever?"
Toya cracked one eye open as he passed.
"Not until the answers stop being dangerous."
The Ghostcraft continued through the clouds, slicing east across the Atlantic. The Citadel waited just beyond the curve of the horizon — and with it, whatever came next.
✦ ✦ ✦
G.H.O.S.T. Citadel – Command Tower: Observation Deck
The highest point of the Citadel wasn't listed on any schematic. No floor designation. No formal access path.
It existed between surveillance blind spots. Designed that way. Intentionally.
Far above the operational wings of the Citadel, beyond the training floors, containment vaults, and council chambers, stood a glass-ringed tower — isolated, atmospheric, and silent.
Atlas Price stood alone at the edge of it, coat drifting slightly from the upward wind pressurizing through the tower vents. His face was sharply cut — high cheekbones, a hardened jaw, and a narrow scar that ran from the corner of his left brow to just beneath his eye, partially obscured by the faint red glow that pulsed beneath the surface. His arms were folded. His eyes — one green, one laced with faint red glow — stayed fixed on the projection screen hovering in front of him.
The room was quiet, save for the low, pulsing hum of the overhead projectors. Four displays hovered silently in a ring around him, casting light across his face:
The stasis vitals of the Geneva enhanced.
Combat telemetry from the Elites' mission feed.
A thermal analysis of the ice anomaly pattern.
And a rotating map tagged with four red markers — one for each confirmed Tyranos soul-claim this year.
Only one remained.
Atlas said nothing.
His jaw was clenched.
One hand — his left — twitched slightly at his side, fingers flexing.
He lifted it slowly, watching the skin crawl with faint veins of red light beneath the surface — cracks, thin as spiderwebs, glowing like lava just under stone.
The toll was due.
"Not yet," he said aloud.
No one else was in the room.
But something heard him.
The answer came from within, not with words, but weight — an ancient pressure pressing down from the inside of his skull, like a claw curled around his spine.
"Time thins. The fifth is owed."
Atlas exhaled slowly, grounding himself. His breath fogged against the cold glass.
"You'll get it."
The pulsing slowed — slightly. But the glow didn't fade.
He turned toward the console at his side and dragged two fingers through the air. The display shifted — showing Xavier Bridger's helmet feed from the Geneva mission.
Frame by frame.
There — the enhanced man. The look on his face.
"You," he had said. "I've never seen you before."
Atlas replayed it twice.
He didn't like what he saw.
Or maybe he didn't like what it reminded him of.
"That boy's too close to the edge already," he murmured. "If the past brushes up against him too soon—"
He stopped himself.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
Payne's voice followed them. Calm. Measured.
"Didn't expect to find you up here."
Atlas didn't turn. "Where else would I be?"
Payne stepped into view, hands behind his back. He didn't need to ask permission to speak — not with Atlas. Not after everything they'd survived together.
"Team's back. No injuries. Frost is filing power interference reports. Kane's already submitted his own recommendations for enhanced classification. The ice... it wasn't just reactive. It had shape. Memory."
Atlas nodded faintly. Still facing the glass.
"And Xavier?"
"Didn't flinch," Payne said. "Stepped forward. Tried to understand before anyone else did."
Atlas finally turned, slowly.
"He's becoming a weapon. He doesn't know it yet."
Payne arched a brow. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
"It is, if he doesn't know what it's for."
A pause settled between them.
Then the light in Atlas's arm flared again — brighter this time, like an ember fanned by wind.
His mouth tightened.
Payne caught the change in posture.
"That's the fourth flare this month," he said, quieter now. "You're running out of time."
"I know."
"You've made four claims this year. You need one more."
"I said I know."
Atlas stepped forward, lifting his glowing hand into the scanner at the edge of the room.
A new interface blinked awake.
TARGET POOL: LEVEL 5. FILTER – GLOBAL CLASSIFIED
He stared at it, unmoving.
Payne's voice was softer now.
"You don't have to take an innocent."
Atlas didn't answer for a beat.
Then, calmly—
"I never do."
He turned his hand over. The cracks in his skin were deeper now, spreading past the wrist.
The red didn't burn.
It bled.
"There's always someone worse," he added. "There's always one more predator in the dark."
Payne looked at him. Carefully.
"What happens if you miss the toll?"
Atlas met his gaze.
"Tyranos takes me."
He turned away again, staring out the window — not at the clouds this time, but at the Citadel below.
"And if I fall... G.H.O.S.T. follows."
That quiet filled the room again.
Then, with no expression, Atlas dismissed the target feed.
"We find the right name. When it's time."
The glow receded. A little.
But the cracks stayed.
Payne stood at the doorway, watching Atlas's reflection in the glass.
"I'll have Frost submit a full power residue sweep."
"Do it."
"Anything else?"
"You want me to loop in the team?"
Atlas didn't turn.
"No briefings. Not yet."
"Even Bridger?"
A long pause.
Then—
"Especially Bridger."
Payne's eyes narrowed. "You think he'll start asking questions?"
"He already is."
Atlas's arm twitched. The red glow beneath his skin pulsed again — this time slower, deeper. Tyranos wasn't screaming. Just watching.
"Then maybe it's time we gave him answers," Payne said.
Atlas turned, finally.
"Not until I know what those answers are."
Their eyes met. Payne didn't speak again.
He gave a small nod, then stepped through the exit. The door hissed shut behind him.
Atlas remained where he was, surrounded by glass and quiet.
Below him, the Citadel glowed with polished calm.
Inside his chest, something old and angry shifted.
And far below the glass floor, buried deeper than any G.H.O.S.T. system dared map, the red kept pulsing — slow and steady.